Soccer Dad

What's an expert?

In his essay America on the Children's Crusade: Think they're attacking you because they really
want to make a deal? Barry Rubin covers opinions often proffered by those sophisticates who are considered experts these days - and why they're wrong

What are the problems in this conception of foreign policy? They can be summed up by saying a belief that everyone is the same. In more detail the misunderstanding includes:

--The theory is that they want material benefits like statehood, money, higher living standards and consumer goods, along with apologies for past mistreatment and respect in the future. In short, they can be bought off. You don't beat them up again to win, rather you apologize for having beaten them up in the past to create a situation in which everyone wins.

But not everyone can be bought off.

--The theory assumes that the other side thinks the best it can achieve is a tie. In fact, for a variety of reasons, the enemies of freedom believe they will achieve total victory. Among other things they attribute this to the tide of history, a "scientific" ideology, the help of the deity, their own greater ruthlessness, a belief that democracies are soft, and other such reasons. Read Mein Kampf or Communist writings and you find parallel arguments, sometimes word for word identical to those of radical nationalists, neo-Marxists, and Islamists today.

But they think they can win..

There's a lot more, but this recalled a thought I had recently. How do you define "expert?"

I put the question to Omri - inspired by this post - who wrote in an e-mail:

Expert - n. Someone credentialed to fabricate for liberals pseudo-sophisticated pretexts for believing what they desperately want to believe.

My idea was:

Someone who has proven over an extended period of time that following his advice can damage in excess of 1000 people or the population of a small country.

Any other ideas? If you blog it, let me know and I'll link to you.